Hey, a Christmas card from my sister/niece. Nearly a month after Christmas. Maybe part of the problem is that she neglected to put the country on the envelope. I'm not saying that my sister is a dumbass but that's a real dumbass move. Especially considering that I explained to her last year that "Scotland" is not a country that you should be putting on your international mail because Scotland isn't a country in that sense. By this, I meant that you should put "United Kingdom". But apparently she interpreted this as, "I'll just leave the country off entirely."

That letter that she sent to "Scotland" ended up in Africa before eventually coming to the correct address.

I mean really, I'm not proclaiming to be some kind of expert in the field of international mail but I know that you have to put the country on the envelope. And I don't just know this because I moved to the UK and have sent stuff abroad. I knew this way before I moved anywhere. I saw it numerous times on the packages that my mother would send abroad. She'd put the country in big block letters while everything else was in normal script. So the country is a really important part of this.

Anyway, it was just a picture of my niece. No letter, no $100 bills. Whatever.

So I was watching the Wonder Years. Specifically, episode 2 of series 5 entitled Day One.

I remembered this one pretty good. It's Kevin's first day in high school. Meets a slightly annoying kid who tries to befriend him. Of course, Kevin is an asshole so by the end of the episode he's yelling, "I'm not your friend. I was never your friend. Leave me alone." It's this guy's first and last appearance in the series.

It also features a teacher who's suffering from PTSD from Vietnam. This is something that I never picked up on in my earlier viewings. He doesn't like loud, sudden noises such as ripping out spiral-ruled notebook paper. So of course, by the end of the episode, Asshole Kevin is ripping out spiral-ruled notebook paper.

Kevin is also a jerk to Paul in a short scene where they're playing basketball and Kevin is being a sore loser.

I enjoy the show but it's interesting to see just how shitty Kevin Arnold was. In the first few years of the show, he's leading Becky Slater on in spite of the fact that he's pining for Winnie Cooper. Of course, Winnie Cooper is also a supremely unlikeable character. And Becky Slater for that matter. I don't like Jew Paul either. Of course, Wayne is a dick. The father is horrible. I guess that the mother is okay. She must be the only redeemable character in the show.

Oh, and then there's the sister. Yeah, she's really unpleasant too with all of that preachy hippie shit. Plus, the actress who potrayed her was English. Fortunately, they dropped her from the show after a couple of years, I think due to drug and alcohol problems.

But yeah, Winnie was always messing Kevin about. This is perhaps the most well-known example of asshole behaviour on the show. Few people like Winnie. Terrible writing just done to create drama. It makes no sense that Kevin would put up with years of mixed signals.

Also featured in his episode was a driving simulator. It really took me back to the recesses of my memory. In the 70s and possibly into the 80s, schools would have driver's education classes that used like a mock up of a car's control panel (steering wheel, gas, brake, whatever) and they'd watch a video. The video was a first person perspective of driving down a road. You'd have to react accordingly based on what you're seeing in the video. Turn at the right time and brake and whatever. There would typically be several of these mock up control panels in a class for all of the students and they'd watch from a single, shared screen.

Now, I have no idea how the two things were connected. Your actions didn't actually control what was on the screen. The screen was just playing from a video tape of film strip or whatever the technology at the time was. So...are your actions being recorded somehow?

In the episode, there are lights on the simulator's desk thing and when Kevin does something wrong, one of the red lights starts flashing. But is this just for comedic effect?

In any event, I have a vague memory of seeing these car simulators. The desk with a steering wheel. But I can't remember exactly where or in what capacity.

It may have been in high school biology class. I have a vague memory of a desk in the back of the room having a steering wheel on it and a girl pretending to drive on it. I think that it was literally just a wheel bolted onto a normal table, though. Not the fancy simulator like in this episode of the Wonder Years.

But I also have a memory of seeing many of these driving simulators, similar to the ones I saw in this episode. It may have been in 7th or 8th grade when I went to a school band competition in some fancy rich high school.

I was looking for information about this shit online but I couldn't find much of anything. I just found some articles about modern driving simulators. I would love to know how these old time school driving simulators worked.